Greed, Not AI, Will End Us

Greed wasn’t a thing when the first group in the hominid species broke away to form the homo sapiens clan, probably about 300-400 thousand years ago. However, AI is creating an increasingly uneven and unbalanced world, one where the greedy thrive at the expense of the generous rest.

Our survival is no longer about need- it’s about greed. And there are two distinct sides emerging in the human race.

What is Greed?

Greed, an insatiable and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food — always wanting more — is a human trait. Greed, like any of the dark triad of personality traits, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, is something that occurs in some, and not in others, but all humans have the potential to be greedy.

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

-Erich Fromm-

Nothing will ever be enough for the greedy person. It sometimes has complex underlying psychological factors like fear, insecurity, and unmet emotional needs, occasioally arising from trauma. People may accumulate possessions and wealth to gain a false sense of security and self-worth, especially if they see others have more. Their brain's reward system delivers pleasure when they get what they want, unconsciously reinforcing greedy actions and creating a cycle of desire. Greed breeds more and bigger greed.

Read: Dante on Greed and Envy

Evolution plays a role. Greed may be a mutated form of a survival instinct, driven by a primal urge for self-preservation. And culture plays a role, too. Modern capitalist societies often encourage materialism and a focus on individual wealth and status. This elevates greed to hero status and amplifies greedy tendencies.

Greed And Evolution

Evolution is the process by which species adapt to become better suited to their environment. We have opposable thumbs, whereas New York’s bed bugs evolved to become more resistant to pesticides- they’re now 250 times less likely to succumb to bug spray than their Florida cousins. Each species is perfectly adapted to its own circumstances.

The success of a species is measured by its ability to survive and reproduce in its particular ecological niche, and a species that is successful in one environment may not be in another. But evolution is a continuous process.

Northrop Grumman reports that even the humble green anole lizards evolved larger toe pads and more scales to outclimb brown anole competitors who had invaded green anole territory in Florida. The evolution took just 20 generations from the day the invaders arrived. Within 15 years, the green anole lizards had outwitted their competition- by adapting themselves.

Humans, like all species, adapt and change in response to new environmental pressures, such as climate change or the emergence of new diseases. Birds on the American West Coast have also changed their nesting times in response to climate change.

Humans, on the other hand, have found external solutions, harnessing nature-based solutions such as planting trees and restoring wetlands, as well as infrastructural changes like the construction of flood defenses, and technological innovations like drought-resistant crops.

Climate change policies are also being adapted in an attempt to mitigate the damage humans cause. Every living thing adapts and changes, it seems, except humans —they adapt the world to suit them.

Is the new frontier about changing our world to suit us, while we drown in profits and stagnate as a species?

Are Humans Inherently Greedy?

For early humans, self-preservation was crucial for survival in times of scarcity. Competition for resources, such as food, existed, and later competition for mates also advanced their self-preservation-centred natures. This behavior, which some may see as greedy, was an evolutionary advantage that promoted individual and genetic survival.

Survival of the fittest was the prevailing principle in early human societies, and individuals who hoarded food and resources were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who were generous. Nomadic hunter-gatherers had no concept of accumulating possessions, but as societies settled throughout the Earth, agriculture developed, and the idea of greed, as we understand it today — especially tied to material wealth — emerged.

Greed arose with the rise of civilization. The shift from a nomadic life to permanent settlements marked a turning point. People made their homes in a particular place and started accumulating possessions. Soon, humans began to hoard as surplus resources were developed. These surplus resources became a measure of wealth, and class-divided societies, based on private property and wealth, emerged. This paved the way for more complex forms of greed and inequality.

Current theories suggest that the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent was the first and oldest cradle of civilization, as evidenced by the early Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe, which has been dated to between 9500 and 8000 BC. As we became more civilized/evolved/advanced, institutionalized greed, along with its societal problems such as inequality and financial crises, also reared its head.

Unlike individual greed, which is a personal vice, institutionalized greed is a systemic feature that involves excessive profit-seeking and self-interest within economic, social, and political systems. Individual greed fuels institutionalized greed, and vice versa, as people feel compelled to act greedily to maintain their success and jobs, while companies continually find new ways to create wealth for their members, disregarding broader social costs.

The people and companies that develop and maintain AI have upped the ante on institutionalised greed. Not only is AI's promise of greater profits an attractive business plan, but it has also given rise to a new generation of technogarchs. Greedier than ever, and less concerned about the cost to the Earth and everyone else in it.

While all living species are equally evolved in the biological sense, humans have evolved unique traits, such as large brains and complex intelligence, that enhance their survival. Some have developed a rapacious greed, while others seek to serve the world. Evolution is our distinct path, based on unique evolutionary pressures and opportunities that we respond to. Yet, two distinctly different types of humans are emerging: the Greedy and the Generous.

Two Types of Humans: The Greedy and the Generous

Two distinct types of humans inhabit the Earth: the greedy and the generous.

Children display spontaneous acts of kindness and empathy daily, suggesting that greed is not yet bonded to our DNA, thankfully. Even recent science indicates that humans are not inherently greedy, although in their paper on the good, bad, and ugly of dispositional greed, researchers argue that greed is part of human nature, but that people differ in their level of greediness.

The good side of greed is the potential for beneficial consequences not just for greedy people themselves, but also for society as a whole. The bad of greed is the potential harm that it causes to others.

Greedy individuals tend to work harder and have higher family incomes, which may trickle down to others. However, the downside is that they often harm others by taking more of scarce resources, are more likely to be corrupt, and have lower moral values. Despite this, greedy people tend to be less happy, less satisfied with life, more distrustful of others, and more envious.

The opposite of greedy is generous, and the greedy need generous people to accumulate more, on their never-ending quest to satisfy their greed. It’s also a conundrum, this duality of man: the driving force of self-preservation that collides with the human need to be connected, perhaps in order to survive.

We have spent centuries extracting the Earth's resources, and continue to do so. It has changed the world from an abundant paradise to a water-scarce planet where greed knows no bounds.

With social media inundating us with the chosen moral values of a diverse group of people, the noise has obscured the underlying cause: greed. We all want the world to work for our benefit, in our way.

Kings and queens and conquerors grasped and grabbed whatever they could, wherever they could, across the globe for centuries. At the pinnacle of the class-based system we live in, even today, kings and queens share their platform with the political elite, who increasingly live like kings and queens. The kings and queens are the old money- extracted from their subjects and exploits, while the politicians continue to maraud the public purse to accumulate vast wealth for themselves and their families.

Similarly, business leaders and technocrats have been accumulating wealth since the Industrial Revolution, which began approximately 200 years ago. They, too, built their kingdoms and empires, accumulating vast wealth that they could never need in 100 lifetimes.

In a well-crafted laundering attempt disguised as public relations, many of these individuals are cloaking themselves in philanthropy while maintaining their positions. And most of their wealth. Nobody earns that kind of money- they take it. Because they're greedy.

And a philanthropic public persona, ironically, is still a lucrative business. Many boards pay sizeable fees for meetings and appearances. That’s not quite what giving means.

Throwing a few breadcrumbs back to the members of their empires under the guise of philanthropy, paying less than a living wage as though they're doing workers a favor, or pledging to give back a little may whitewash their ill-gotten gains; it's still greed that defines the greedy.

So there is a large and growing group of greedy people, their shiny exteriors attracting new members in hordes. But wealth requires sacrifice. To earn money takes effort, whether it's your effort or the effort of others. And this is the flip side of the coin.

Generous people give freely, of themselves, their time, their wealth. They are necessary not just to help the greedy accumulate, but also to balance the scales. And there is a growing movement of generous people who care about the planet they live on and the people who live on it. And they are recognizing the exploitation and digging in their heels.

AI, however, can be optimised to do whatever you want it to do. It's an enticing business model —and AI doesn't demand a minimum wage or join unions; people control it. Greedy people who have seen the money that can be made from new technology. And they are salivating over it.

AI’s Unintended Consequence: Greed

In 2023, CNN reported that 42% of CEOs, top business leaders surveyed at a Yale CEO Summit, were seriously concerned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity in the near future. A few weeks later, dozens of AI industry leaders, academics, and even some celebrities signed a statement warning of an “extinction” risk from AI.

They said:

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Yet Stanford University's Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence's latest AI-Index indicates, amongst other things, that now:

• AI is increasingly embedded in everyday life.

• Business is all in on AI, fueling record investment and usage.

• Complex reasoning remains a challenge.

• In some settings, language model agents outperformed humans in programming tasks with limited time budgets.

• The responsible AI ecosystem is evolving unevenly.

• AI-related incidents are rising sharply.

• Global AI optimism is on the rise, but deep regional divides persist.

• The AI frontier is becoming increasingly competitive- and crowded.

Competition and division- the breeding ground where greed thrives.

In a paper on Artificial Intelligence and Greed, researchers found that machine learning helps criminals. They observe that as technology evolves, some fear that AI and improved data gathering have the potential to fuel a massive increase in greedy actions. They say these aspects help greedy actors achieve their goals. Significantly, AI makes small, greedy actions easier and cheaper to carry out, and thus, more scalable.

Moreover, AI is not capable of feeling anything, whether it's love, fear, or greed. It simply does what it's told to. And this is where the problem lies: the greedy people building the bots aren't doing so for altruistic reasons. They are motivated by greed. For those who are greedy, control is one of the easiest paths to accumulating vast wealth.

Everyone Wants a Better Life, But How Much Is Enough?

From kings and queens and conquerors to the political elite and captains of industry, greed has also permeated ordinary people. Within families, siblings destroy each other to get their hands on the family wealth. Parental Estrangement has reached epidemic proportions.

From there, greedy individuals — having honed their dark art within the family — go out into the world in pursuit of everything. They want anything, everything. It's about taking what someone else has, with little or no regard for the other, often leaving behind traumatized victims. And it's never enough.

"Greed has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome."

 -Erich Fromm-

The downside of never having enough — being driven by greed, as Fromm observed — has personal negative consequences. The personal cost of greed includes being in a constant state of dissatisfaction, emotional instability, including frequent bouts of depression, defective relationships, and significant mental health struggles, often accompanied by additional burdens such as substance abuse.

For everyone around them, greed fosters negativity and instability. They neglect others' needs and contribute to social and economic problems. Fraud, trickery, and theft have a profound impact on victims and society as a whole. The victim's life may be destroyed, and it costs a vast amount of money to maintain a criminal justice system and make victim recovery centers available.

Additionally, we live in a world of greedy people, where we trust less and retreat from acting as a community, fearing that there may be criminals among us. Children don't play outside alone for fear they may be kidnapped for a ransom, or worse, they may be objects of other greedy needs.

Greedy people also often take unnecessary and harmful risks to acquire more wealth or power, leading to their downfall. But too often, they are welcomed, as they can afford to come bearing gifts.

But beware the gift-bearer: it may simply be a token given with expectations of a return. Because for the greedy, nothing will ever satisfy their greed. There's always something somebody else has that they want. There's always more to take.

Greed And Peace In An Artificially Intelligent World

"Greed and peace preclude each other."

-Erich Fromm-

Pick your side. There's a battle coming: The battle for the soul of the Earth. The irony is, the generous don't have the resources to fight, and the Earth will collapse without them, leaving nothing for the greedy.

Or we can work together to make our planet a better place for everyone. Equally.